Duxbury, MA Property Tax: Prop 2½, Not a Flat Rate
Anyone coming to Duxbury from Rhode Island's South County or East Bay towns will find a property tax system that looks similar on the surface — a rate quoted per $1,000 of assessed value — but works on genuinely different machinery underneath. Massachusetts towns don't just pick a mill rate and adjust it as they please; the rate is the output of a statutory formula called Proposition 2½, and Duxbury's own numbers only make sense once that formula is understood. This page walks through how Prop 2½ actually works, lays out Duxbury's confirmed FY2023 through FY2025 rate history, and is upfront about the one number that could not be confirmed for this page: the exact FY2026 rate.
Proposition 2½: Massachusetts Caps the Levy, Not the Rate
Massachusetts property taxation runs on Proposition 2½, a 1980 ballot law, and the first thing to understand is what it does not do: it does not set a statewide tax rate, and it does not cap what an individual property owner pays. Instead, it caps the total amount of property-tax revenue — called the “levy” — that a town is allowed to raise in a given year. Under the law, a town's total levy can never exceed 2.5% of the town's total assessed value, and from one year to the next, the levy itself can grow by at most 2.5% plus whatever additional revenue comes from “new growth” (newly built homes, additions, subdivided lots, and other newly taxable construction) — unless voters approve an override at a town meeting or ballot.
That's a fundamentally different starting point than a flat mill-rate system. In a flat-rate town, the rate is the fixed input and the tax bill is the output. Under Prop 2½, the allowed total levy is the fixed input, calculated from the prior year's levy plus the capped growth allowance, and the per-$1,000 rate is actually the output — it's backed into by dividing that year's allowed levy by the town's total assessed value. When property values rise faster than the levy is allowed to grow, the rate has to come down to keep total revenue within the cap; when values are flat or fall, the rate has to rise to hit the same allowed levy.
How Duxbury Actually Sets Its Rate Each Year
Each fall, Duxbury's Board of Assessors calculates the coming fiscal year's tax rate at a public “classification hearing,” where they also decide whether to apply a single rate to all property or split the rate between residential and commercial/industrial/personal property. Duxbury has consistently chosen a single rate applied equally to both residential and commercial property, rather than a split rate — a real, meaningful choice, since a number of Massachusetts towns do split their rates and charge commercial property more heavily to ease the burden on homeowners.
The mechanics are otherwise similar in form to a mill rate: the resulting figure is expressed as dollars per $1,000 of assessed value, the same unit this site uses on its Rhode Island pages. The difference is entirely in where that number comes from. A Rhode Island town's rate is set by that town's own budget process without a state-imposed revenue-growth ceiling; Duxbury's rate is the arithmetic result of a state-capped levy divided by whatever the town's total assessed value happens to be that year — which is exactly why Duxbury's rate has moved down even as home values have climbed sharply.
Duxbury's Confirmed Rate History: FY2023–FY2025
Per Duxbury's own Assessing Department and Treasurer/Collector materials, the town's tax rate — a single rate for both residential and commercial property — has run as follows: FY2023, $10.69 per $1,000 of assessed value; FY2024, $10.06 per $1,000; FY2025, $10.14 per $1,000. The town's Treasurer/Collector FAQ specifically confirms “$10.14 per one thousand of assessed valuation” as the FY2025 figure.
Notice the pattern: the rate dropped from FY2023 to FY2024, then ticked back up slightly for FY2025 — it did not simply climb every year the way a casual reader might assume a “tax rate” does. That's Prop 2½ working exactly as designed. As Duxbury's total assessed value has grown, the same capped levy gets divided across a bigger base, which pushes the per-$1,000 rate down; when assessed-value growth slows or the allowed levy needs a bigger share of a smaller relative base, the rate can tick back up. Over a much longer horizon, the town's own figures show the average single-family assessed value rising from about $238,500 in FY1991 to about $1,242,100 in FY2025 — more than a fivefold increase — while the per-$1,000 rate over that same stretch has moved in a comparatively narrow band, which is the levy cap doing its job.
FY2026: What's Confirmed, and What Isn't Yet
For FY2026, Duxbury's total assessed property value rose 4.63% — an increase of roughly $326 million — bringing the townwide total to approximately $7.3 billion. At its classification hearing, the Selectboard voted unanimously for a single tax rate again, continuing the same approach used in FY2023–FY2025 rather than splitting residential from commercial.
What this page cannot responsibly tell you is the exact new FY2026 dollar rate. That specific figure was not confirmed in the research behind this page, and rather than guess at a number, the honest approach is to say so plainly: given the FY2023–FY2025 pattern of the rate easing as assessed values climb, a rate somewhere in the high-$9-to-just-over-$10 range per $1,000 would be consistent with the trend — but that is a reasoned expectation based on the pattern, not a confirmed figure, and it should not be treated as Duxbury's actual FY2026 rate. Anyone who needs the real number should go directly to the Town of Duxbury's Assessing Department page (town.duxbury.ma.us) and look for the current fiscal year's classification-hearing results or tax-rate-history document, since that is the only source that can confirm the figure with certainty.
Why This Matters for a Buyer Comparing Duxbury to Other Markets
The practical takeaway isn't just Duxbury's specific numbers — it's that a Massachusetts town's rate history has to be read differently than a flat-rate town's. A rate that goes down year over year in Duxbury is not necessarily a sign of a town cutting services or under-funding its budget; it can just as easily mean assessed values rose faster than the levy was permitted to grow. Conversely, a rate increase doesn't automatically mean a town is spending more aggressively — it can mean assessed-value growth slowed relative to the levy the town is entitled to raise, or that voters approved an override for a specific project.
For Duxbury specifically, the single-rate approach also matters: because residential and commercial property are taxed identically, a buyer evaluating a home doesn't need to separately account for a residential-versus-commercial split the way they would in a town that classifies property differently. That single fact — combined with understanding that the rate is a levy-cap output rather than a directly set number — is most of what's needed to read Duxbury's tax rate correctly.
Before You Rely on This Number, Verify It Directly
Every dollar figure on this page through FY2025 traces back to Duxbury's own Assessing Department and Treasurer/Collector materials, and the FY2026 assessed-value growth figures (4.63%, roughly $326 million, bringing the townwide total to about $7.3 billion) come from reporting on the Selectboard's classification-hearing vote. The one number this page will not manufacture is the exact FY2026 per-$1,000 rate — it simply was not confirmed in the research behind this page, and inventing a precise figure to fill that gap would do a reader more harm than good.
Tax rates, assessed values, and classification decisions change on an annual cycle, so anyone using this page to budget for a purchase in Duxbury should confirm the current rate directly with the Town of Duxbury's Assessing Department before relying on it, and should consult a Massachusetts-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney before making a purchase decision based on property tax exposure.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. The mechanism described here — Proposition 2½'s cap on total levy growth, rather than a directly set statewide or flat town rate — is drawn from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue's own long-standing description of Prop 2½ (a 1980 ballot law). Duxbury's confirmed tax-rate history (FY2023: $10.69, FY2024: $10.06, FY2025: $10.14, all per $1,000 of assessed value, applied as a single rate to both residential and commercial property) and its average single-family assessed value history (about $238,500 in FY1991 rising to about $1,242,100 in FY2025) are per the Town of Duxbury's own Assessing Department and Treasurer/Collector FAQ materials. FY2026 assessed-value growth (4.63%, roughly a $326 million increase, bringing the townwide total to approximately $7.3 billion) and the Selectboard's unanimous vote for a single FY2026 rate are per reporting on Duxbury's classification hearing. This page does not assert a specific FY2026 dollar-per-$1,000 rate, because that figure could not be confirmed directly in the research behind this page — readers who need the current number should consult the Town of Duxbury's Assessing Department page (town.duxbury.ma.us) directly. Nothing here is tax or legal advice; consult a Massachusetts-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney, and Duxbury's own Assessing Department, before making a purchase decision based on property tax exposure.